20 November 2009

Joe Overton | Overton Window | Overton Window Political Theory

The Overton Window is a accessible relations abstraction developed by Joe Overton, above carnality admiral of the bourgeois Mackinac Center for Public Policy in Michigan. The abstraction suggests that action debates are usually bound by the boundaries of accessible acceptance, and account alfresco those boundaries are usually alone after abundant examination. If your adopted action solutions don't abatement aural those boundaries, they won't alike be heard in the boilerplate accessible debate. Overton declared those boundaries as a window, appropriately the concept's name.

But Overton went beyond that, arguing that the window could be moved by intentionally arguing for "fringe" ideas. He proposed a range of public responses to an idea, from Unthinkable through Radical, Acceptable, Sensible, and Popular, to Policy. In Overton's thesis, if you want the Radical to be deemed Acceptable, advocate for the Unthinkable. Pushing the boundaries of the fringe makes less extreme ideas seem moderate by comparison, bringing them into the Overton Window so they are included in the mainstream debate.

For example, if you believe public schools should be contracted to for-profit education businesses, propose closing down public schools entirely. As compared to the Unthinkable idea of no public schools, the heretofore Radical idea of taxpayer-funded for-profit schools seems moderate and thus Acceptable. This was among the Mackinac Center's early projects in using the Overton Window, and by 1988 the idea of charter schools had become Acceptable. In many states, taxpayer-funded for-profit schools are now Policy